Our cells are more like us than we may think. They're sensitive to their environment, poking and prodding deliberately at their surroundings with hand-like feelers and chemical signals as they decide whether ...

Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found that a molecule produced naturally by muscles in response to nerve damage can reduce symptoms and prolong life in a mouse model of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). ...

(PhysOrg.com) -- A single bacterium can act alone, performing the same kinds of actions that a group normally does. The behavior of that bacterium can be manipulated at the cellular level. That’s the intriguing ...

Before one of your muscles can twitch, before the thought telling it to flex can race down your nerve, a tiny floodgate of sorts -- called an ion channel -- must open in the surface of each cell in these organs ...

Breathing carbon dioxide can trigger panic attacks, but the biological reason for this effect has not been understood. A new study by University of Iowa researchers shows that carbon dioxide increases brain acidity, which ...

A team led by Yale University scientists has developed a new approach to studying how immune cells chase down bacteria in our bodies. Their findings are described in the November 15 issue of Nature Methods Advanc ...

(PhysOrg.com) -- Experiments led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have demonstrated that normally friendly ants can turn against each other by exploiting the chemical cues they use ...

Using state-of-the-art electron microscopy techniques, a team led by researchers from Caltech has for the first time visualized and described the precise arrangement of chemoreceptors—the receptors that ...

Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)-funded research, published this week in Chemical Communications, describes how scientists have discovered molecules that could confuse insects' ability to det ...

(PhysOrg.com) -- Deciphering the very early history of life on Earth is difficult. In the darkest recesses of the first billion years there are no 'body' fossils - no physical remains. Instead, scientists ...

Scientists have identified a protein that appears not only to be central to the process that causes Parkinson's disease but could also play a role in muting the high from methamphetamine and other addictive drugs.

Investigators at Burnham Institute for Medical Research (Burnham) have learned that a protein called Shp2 plays a critical role in the pathways that control decisions for differentiation or self-renewal in both human embryonic ...

(PhysOrg.com) -- Harvard researchers have established a link between the growth of blood vessels and the mechanical stresses caused by the environment within which the vessels grow, a new understanding that ...

Chronic stress takes a physical and emotional toll on our bodies and scientists are working on piecing together a medical puzzle to understand how we respond to stress at the cellular level in the brain. Being able to quickly ...